noisy fanning-mill to shovel back the wheat and to rake away the cheat.
"Pshaw!" said Tom. "A country girl doesn't need any help to get off a
horse."
Rachel had come to call on Barbara, nor did she admit to herself that
her visit had anything to do with Tom. But she found herself in an
attitude to which she was unaccustomed. From the moment that Tom had
been charged with murder her liking for him increased. The question of
his guilt or innocence did not disturb her--except in so far as it
jeoparded his life; he was at least a dashing fellow, out of the common
run. And now that he had been acquitted, and was a hero of everybody,
Rachel found in herself a passion that was greater than her vanity, and
that overmastered even her prudence. She was tormented by her thoughts
of Tom in the day, she dreamed of him at night. Tom would not come to
her, and she felt herself at length drawn by a force she could not
resist to go to him.
Barbara asked Rachel to stay to dinner, and promised that Tom would put
away her horse as soon as he knew that she had come. This was but the
common hospitality of the country, but Barbara hoped that Rachel's
presence might evoke Tom's old buoyant self again. And so, while Barbara
sat on the loom-bench weaving a web of striped linsey, Rachel sat near
her, knitting. It appeared to Barbara that Rachel had undergone almost
as great a change as Tom. She had lost her taciturnity. Her tongue kept
pace with the click of her needles. She only broke the thread of her
talk when she paused to take the end of one needle out of the quill of
her knitting-case and put another in. Under color of sympathy for the
Graysons in their troubles she talked of what was in her mind. How
dreadful it must have been for Tom to be in jail! How anxious he must
have been at the trial! How well he bore up under it all! How proud he
must have been when he was acquitted! These and such remarks were web
and woof of her talk, while Barbara was throwing her nimble shuttle to
and fro and driving the threads home with the double-beat of her
loom-comb.
By half-past 11 the early farm dinner was almost ready, and Mrs. Grayson
blew a blast on the tin horn which hung outside of the door, to let Tom
and Janet know that they were to come in.
When Tom heard the horn he went and led Rachel's horse to the stable,
after perching Janet in the saddle; and then he delayed long enough to
shuck out and give him eight or ten ears of corn. After this he came to
the house and washed his hands and face in the country way, with much
splash and spatter, in a basin that sat on a bench outside of the door,
and Janet washed hers, imitating to the best of her ability Tom's
splattering way of dashing the water about. Then the two used the towel
that hung on a roller in the kitchen porch, and Tom entered the kitchen
with his clothes soiled by labor and with that look of healthful fatigue
which comes of plentiful exercise in the open air.
"Howdy, Rachel? All well 't your house?" This was the almost invariable
formula of country politeness, and it was accompanied by a faint smile
of welcome and a grasp of her hand.
"Howdy, Tom?" said Rachel, cordially. "I hope you are well." Rachel
regarded him a moment, and then let her eyes droop. Had Rachel
discovered that her face was at its best when her long eyelashes were
lowered in this fashion, or was the action merely instinctive?
"Oh, so-so!" answered Tom, uneasily, as he seated himself with the rest
at the table. Rachel sat next to him, and he treated her with hospitable
politeness, but she looked in vain for any sign of his old affection.
She hardly once fairly encountered his eye during the meal. He seemed
more indifferent to her attractions than she had ever known any man, old
or young, to be. And yet she knew that her charms had lost nothing of
their completeness. That very morning she had gone into the rarely
opened Albaugh parlor and examined herself in the largest looking-glass
in the house--the one that hung between the parlor windows, and that had
a print of Mount Vernon in the upper panel of the space inclosed between
the turned frames. Her fresh and yet delicate complexion was without a
speck or flaw, her large eyes were as lustrous as ever, and there was
the same exquisite symmetry and harmony of features that had made her a
vision of loveliness to so many men. But Tom seemed more interested in
his cousin, whom he kept laughing with a little childish byplay while
talking to his sister's guest. Rachel felt herself baffled, and by
degrees, though treated cordially, she began to feel humiliated. When
dinner was finished by a course of pumpkin pie and quince preserves
served with cream, Tom pushed back his chair and explained that he was
just going to begin building some rail pens to hold the corn when it
should be gathered and shucked, and that he could not allow himself the
usual noon-time rest. The days were getting so short, you know. Would
Rachel excuse him? Barbara would blow the horn so that he could put the
saddle on Rachel's horse when she wanted it. But wouldn't she stay to
supper?
Rachel declined to stay to supper, and she was visibly less animated
after dinner than she had been before. The conversation flagged on both
sides; Barbara became preoccupied with her winding-blades, her bobbins,
and her shuttle, while Rachel was absorbed in turning the heel of her
stocking. By half-past 1 o'clock the guest felt bound to go home; the
days were getting shorter and there was much to be done at home, she
remembered. The horn was blown, and Tom led her horse out to the block
and helped her to mount. As he held her stirrup for her to place her
foot, it brought to his memory, with a rush, her refusal to let him ride
home with her from the Timber Creek school-house after the "singing."
When he looked up he saw that Rachel's mind had followed the same line
of association; both of them colored at this manifest encounter of their
thoughts.
"I suppose I oughtn't to have said 'no' that day at the school-house."
Rachel spoke with feeling, moved more by the desperate desire she felt
to draw Tom out than by any calculation in making the remark.
"Yes, you ought," said Tom. "I never blamed you."
Then there was an awkward pause.
"Good-bye, Tom," said Rachel, extending her hand. "Won't you come over
and see us sometime?"
"I'm generally too tired when night comes. Good-bye, Rachel"; and he
took her hand in a friendly way. But this was one of those farewells
that are aggravated by mental contrast, and Rachel felt, as she looked
at Tom's serious and preoccupied face, that it was to her the end of a
chapter.
Tom started up the pathway toward the house, but stopped half-way and
plucked a ripe seed-pod from the top of a poppy-stalk, and rubbed it out
between his two hands as he looked a little regretfully after Rachel
until she disappeared over the hill. Then he turned and saw Barbara
standing on the porch regarding him inquiringly.
"You aren't like yourself any more, Tom," she said.
"I know that," he answered, meditatively, at the same time filliping the
minute poppy-seeds away, half a dozen at a time, with his thumb. "I
don't seem to be the same fellow that I was three months ago. Then I'd
'a' followed Rachel like a dog every step of the way home."
"She's awfully in love with you, poor girl."
"Oh! she'll get over that, I suppose. She's been in love before."
"And you don't care for her any more?"
"I don't seem to care for anything that I used to care for. I wouldn't
like to be what I used to be."
This sentence was rather obscure, and Barbara still looked at Tom
inquiringly and waited for him to explain. But he only went on in the
same inconsequential way, as he plucked and rubbed out another
poppy-head. "I don't care for anything nowadays, but just to stay with
you and mother. When a fellow's been through what I have, I suppose he
isn't ever the same that he was; it takes the _ambition_ out of you.
Hanging makes an awful change in your feelings, you know"; and he smiled
grimly.
"Don't say that; you make me shiver," said Barbara.
"But I say, Barb," and with this Tom sowed broadcast all the poppy-seed
in his hand, "yonder comes somebody over the hill that'll get a warmer
welcome than Rachel did, I'll guarantee."
How often in the last week had Barbara looked to see if somebody were
not coming over the hill! Now she found her vision obstructed by a
"laylock" bush, and she came down the path to where her brother stood.
As soon as she had made out that the pedestrian was certainly Hiram
Mason, she turned and went into the house, to change her apron for a
fresher one, and with an instinctive wish to hide from Mason a part of
the eagerness she had felt for his coming. But when he had reached the
gate and was having his hand cordially shaken by Tom, Barbara came back
to the door to greet him; and just because she couldn't help it, she
went out on the porch, then down the steps and half-way to the gate to
tell him how glad she was to see him.
XXXI
HIRAM AND BARBARA
The cordiality of his welcome was a surprise to Mason; he could hardly
tell why. The days had dragged heavily since his separation from
Barbara, and his mind had been filled with doubts. The delay imposed
upon him by Barbara's circumstances and then by his own was unwholesome;
love long restrained from utterance is apt to make the soul sick. During
his last week in Moscow he had copied court minutes and other documents
into the folio records in an abstracted fashion, while the conscious
part of his intellect was debating his chance of securing Barbara's
consent. He fancied that she might hold herself more than ever aloof
from him now; that her pride had been too deeply wounded to recover, and
that she would never bring herself to accept him.
When he had at length finished all there was for him to do in the
clerk's office at Moscow, and Magill had contrived to borrow enough
money to pay him his fifty cents a day, Mason was too impatient to wait
for some wagon bound for the Timber Creek neighborhood. He started on
foot, intending to pass the night under the friendly roof of the
Graysons, and to push on homeward in the morning; for he would already
be a month late in beginning his college year. His mind was revolving
the plan of his campaign against Barbara's pride all the way over the
great lonely level prairie, the vista of which stretched away to the
west until it was interrupted by a column of ominous black smoke, which
told of the beginning of the autumnal prairie fires that annually sweep
the great grassy plains and keep them free of trees. At length the
tantalizing forest, so long in sight, was reached, and he entered the
pale fringe of slender poplar-trees--that forlorn hope thrown out by the
forest in its perpetual attempt to encroach on a prairie annually
fire-swept. But when at last he entered the greater forest itself, now
half denuded of its shade, the problem was still before him. He
contrived with much travail of mind what seemed to him an ingenious
device for overcoming Barbara's fear of his family. He would propose
that his mother should write her a letter giving a hearty assent to his
proposal of marriage. If that failed, he could not think of any other
plan likely to be effective.
Like many conversations planned in absence, this one did not seem so
good when he had the chance to test it. The way in which Tom welcomed
him at the gate, shaking his hand and taking hold of his arm in an
affectionate, informal way, gave him an unexpected pleasure, though
nothing could be more natural under the circumstances than Tom's
gratitude. And when Tom said, "Barbara'll be awful glad to see you, an'
so'll Mother," Mason was again surprised. Not that he knew any good
reason why Barbara and her mother should not be glad to see him, but he
who broods long over his feelings will hatch forebodings. When Hiram
looked up from Tom at the gate, he saw Barbara's half-petite figure and
piquant face, full as ever of force and aspiration, waiting half-way
down the walk. Barbara paused there, half-way to the gate, but she could
not wait even there; she came on down farther and met him, and looked in
his eyes frankly and told him--with some reserve in her tone, it is
true, but with real cordiality--that she was glad to see him. And by the
time he reached the porch, Mother Grayson herself--kindly, old-fashioned
soul that she was--stood in the door and greeted Mason with tears in her
eyes.
After a little rest and friendly talk in the cool, well-kept, home-like
sitting-room, Hiram went out with Tom to look about the familiar place.
The fruit trees were pretty well stripped of their foliage by a recent
wind and the ground was carpeted with brown and red and yellow leaves,
while the rich autumn sunlight, which but half warmed the atmosphere,
gave one an impression of transientness and of swift-impending change.
It was one of those days on which the seasons are for the instant
arrested--a little moment of repose and respite before the inevitable
catastrophe. The busiest man can hardly resist the influence of such a
day; farmers are prone to bask in the slant sunlight at such times and
to talk to one another over line-fences or seated on top-rails. The
crows fly hither and thither in the still air, and the swallows,
gathered in noisy concourse, seem reluctant to set out upon their
southward journey. But Mason soon left Tom and entered the kitchen,
where he sat himself down upon a bench over against the loom and watched
the swift going to and fro of Barbara's nimble shuttle, and listened to
the muffled pounding of the loom-comb, presently finding a way to make
himself useful by winding bobbins.
The two were left alone at intervals during the afternoon, but Mason
could not summon courage to reopen the question so long closed between
them. His awkward reserve reacted on Barbara, and conversation between
them became difficult, neither being able to account for the mood of the
other.
After a while Janet, tired with following Tom the livelong day, came
into the kitchen and besought Barbara to sing "that song about Dick, you
know"; and though Mason did not know who Dick might be, he thought he
would rather hear Barbara sing than to go on trying to keep up a
flagging conversation; so he seconded Janet's request. When Barbara had
tied a broken string in the "harness" of the loom, she resumed her seat
on the bench and sang while she wove.
BARBARA'S WEAVING SONG.
Fly, shuttle, right merrily, merrily,
Carry the swift-running thread;
Keep time to the fancy that eagerly
Weaveth a web in my head.
For Dick he will come again, come again,
Dick he will come again home from afar
With musket and powder-horn,
Musket and powder-horn, home from the war.
Beat up the threads lustily, lustily,
Weave me a web good and strong;
Heart brimful and flowing with joyousness
Ever is bursting with song.
For Dick he will come again, etc.
Warp, hold the woof lovingly, lovingly,
Taking and holding it fast;
Hearts bound together in unity
Love with a love that will last.
For Dick he will come again, come again,
Dick he will come again home from afar
With musket and powder-horn,
Musket and powder-horn, home from the war.
By the time the ditty was ended, Mrs. Grayson was setting the
supper-table by the fire-place, doing her best to honor her guest. She
took down the long-handled waffle-irons and made a plate of those
delicious cakes unknown since kitchen fire-places went out, and the like
of which will perhaps never be known again henceforth. She got out some
of the apple-butter, of which half a barrel had been made so toilsomely
but the week before, and this she flanked with a dish of her peach
preserves, kept sacredly for days of state. The "chaney" cups and
saucers were also set out in honor of Hiram, and the almost transparent
preserved peaches were eaten with country cream, from saucers thin
enough to show an opalescent translucency, and decorated with a gilt
band and delicate little flowers. This china, which had survived the
long wagon-journey from Maryland, was not often trusted upon the table.
"My! What a nice supper we've got, Aunt Marthy!" said Janet, clapping
her hands, as they took their seats at the table.
"It seems to me you're making company out of me," said Mason, in a tone
of protest.
"We sha'n't have you again soon, Mason," said Tom, "and we don't often
see the like of you."
The words were spontaneous, but Tom ducked his head with a half-ashamed
air when he had spoken them. Barbara liked Tom's little speech: it
expressed feelings that she could not venture to utter; and it had,
besides, a touch of Tom's old gayety of feeling in it.
When supper was well out of the way Hiram proposed a walk with Barbara,
but it did no good. They talked mechanically about what they were not
thinking about, and by the time they got back to the house Mason was
becoming desperate. He must leave in the morning very early, and he had
made no progress; he could not bring himself to approach the subject
about which Barbara seemed so loath to speak, and concerning which he
dreaded a rebuff as he dreaded death.
They entered the old kitchen and found no one there; the embers were
flickering in the spacious fire-place and peopling the room with
grotesque shadows and dancing lights.
"Let us sit here awhile, Barbara," he said, with a strange note of
entreaty in his tone, as he swung the heavy door shut and put down the
wooden latch--relic of the pioneer period.
"Just as you please, Mr. Mason," answered Barbara,
"Oh! say _Hiram_, won't you?" He said this with a touch of impatience.
"Hiram!" said Barbara, laughing.
He led her to the loom-bench.
"Sit there on high, as you did the night you put me into a state of
misery from which I haven't escaped yet. There, put your feet on the
chair-rung, as you did that night."
He spoke with peremptoriness, as he placed a chair for her feet, so that
she might sit with her back to the loom. Then he drew up another
shuck-bottomed chair in such a way as to sit beside and yet half facing
her, but lower.
"Now," he said, doggedly, "we can finish the talk we had then."
"That seems ages ago," said Barbara, dreamily; "so much has happened
since."
"So long ago that you don't care to renew the subject?"
"I--" But Barbara stopped short. The feeble blaze in the fire-place
suddenly went out.
Hiram did not know where to begin. He got up and took some dry chips
from a basket and threw them on the slumbering coals, so as to set the
flame a-going again. Then he sat down in his chair and looked up at the
now silent Barbara, and tried in vain to guess her mood. But she
remained silent and waited for him to take the lead.
"Do you remember what you said then?" he asked.
"No! how can I? It seems so long ago."
"You said a pack of nonsense." As he blurted out this charge Mason
turned his head round obliquely, still regarding Barbara.
"Did I? That's just like me," Barbara answered, with a little laugh.
"No, it isn't like you," he replied, almost rudely. "You're the most
sensible woman I ever knew, except on one subject."
"What's that?" Barbara was startled by the vehemence and abruptness of
his speech, and she asked this in a half-frightened voice.
"Your pride. I looked up to you then, as I do now. You're something
above me--I just worship you." To a man of maturity this sort of talk
seems extravagant enough. But one must let youth paint itself as it
will, with all its follies on its head. You've said sillier things than
that in your time, sober reader--you know you have!
"I do just worship you, Barbara Grayson," Hiram went on; "but you talked
a parcel of fool stuff that night about the superiority of my family,
and about your not being able to bear it that my people should look down
on you, and--well, a pack of tomfoolery; that's what it was, Barbara,
and there's no use of calling it anything else."
Barbara was silent.
"Now, I'm not going to give you a chance to make any more such speeches.
But I want to ask you whether, if I should send you a letter from my
mother when I get home, and maybe from my sisters too, after I have told
them the whole truth, urging you to accept me and become one of our
family--I want to know whether, then, you would be willing; whether
you'd take pity on a poor fellow who can't get along without you. Would
that suit you?"
"No, it wouldn't," said Barbara, looking at the now blazing chips in the
fire-place with her head bent forward.
"Well, what on earth _would_, then?" And Mason tilted back his chair in
the nervousness of desperation and brought his eyes to a focus on her
face, which was strangely illuminated in the flickering foot-lights from
the hearth.
"Did I talk that way last summer?"
"Yes, you did."
"It must have hurt you. I can see it hurt you, from the way you speak
about it."
"Yes," said Mason; "I've been in a sort of purgatory ever since."
"And I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I'd rather do anything than to
hurt your feelings." Here she paused, unable to proceed at once, but he
waited for her to show the way. Presently she went on:
"Now, Mr. Mason,--Hiram, I mean,--I'm going to punish myself for my
foolish pride. I must have felt very differently then to what I do now.
The more I have seen of you the more I have--admired you." Barbara
stopped and took up the hem of her apron and picked at the stitches as
though she would ravel them. Then she proceeded, dropping her head
lower, "Somehow I hate to say it,--but I'm going to punish myself,--the
more I have seen of you the more I have--_liked_ you. It don't matter
much to me now whether your mother likes me or not, and I really don't
seem to care what your sisters think about your loving a poor girl from
the country."
"Hush! Don't talk that way about yourself," said Hiram. But Barbara was
so intent on finishing what she had resolved to say that she did not
give any heed to him, but only went on pulling and picking at the hem of
her apron.
"I only want to know one thing, Mr. Mason, and that is whether
you--whether you really and truly want me?" Her face blushed deeply, she
caught her breath, her head bowed lower than before, as though trying in
vain to escape from Hiram's steadfast gaze.
"God only knows how I do love you, Barbara," said Hiram, speaking softly
now and letting his eyes rest on the floor.
"Well," said Barbara, "as good a man as you deserves to have what he
wants, you know"; and here she smiled faintly. "I'll put in the dust all
the wicked pride that hurts you so." And Barbara made a little gesture.
Then after a moment she began again, stammeringly, "If--if you really
want me, Hiram Mason,--why--then--I'll face anything rather than miss of
being yours. Now will that do? And will you forgive me for keeping you
in purgatory, as you call it, all this time?" There were tears in her
eyes as she spoke; partly of penitence, perhaps, but more than half of
happiness.
When she had finished, Mason got up and pushed his chair away and came
and sat down on the loom-bench beside her, Barbara making room for him,
as for the first time she lifted her eyes timidly to his.
"I've been a goose, Barbara, not to understand you before. What a woman
you are!"
XXXII
THE NEXT MORNING
When Tom waked up the next morning in the gray daybreak, he found that
Mason, who should have shared his room, had not come to bed at all. And
when Tom came down to uncover the live coals and build up the kitchen
fire, he found that the embers had not been covered under the ashes as
usual; there were instead smoking sticks of wood that had newly burned
in two, the ends having canted over backward outside of the andirons.
The table stood in the floor set with plates and cups and saucers for
two, and there were the remains of an early breakfast. There was still
heat in the coffee-pot when Tom touched it, and from these signs he read
the story of Barbara's betrothal to Mason; he conjectured that this
interview, which was to precede a separation of many months, had been
unintentionally protracted until it was near the time for Mason's
departure. The debris of the farewell love-feast, eaten in the silent
hour before daybreak, seemed to have associations of sentiment. Tom
regarded these things and was touched and pleased, but he was also
amused. This sitting the night out seemed an odd freak for a couple so
tremendously serious and proper as the little sister and the
schoolmaster.